Dear Members,
It is an honour to serve you in my second year as President of the Australian Wagyu Association. I would like to thank the Board for their show of confidence in electing me as President again and entrusting me with this responsibility for the next 12 months.
Changes to the AWA Board:
To the retiring directors, Glen Wright and Richard Puddicombe, I thank you both for your service. Glen oversaw the Conference and Competitions Committee, which delivered the two largest WagyuEdge conferences to date. Richard was a key member of the Audit and Finance Committee and the Conference and Competition Committee.
I would like to welcome Nathan Roberts and Stephen Gibbons to the board. Both come with a wealth of industry relevant knowledge and professional skill sets that complement the Board skill matrix well. I am sure that both Nathan and Stephen will make significant contributions during their tenure. To the existing Board, thank you for continuing your service to the Members. Your voluntary contribution is very much appreciated.
- Mr Laird Morgan – President and Chair of the Board
- Mr Jeremy Cooper – Senior Vice President
- Ms Robyn Elphick – Junior Vice President
- Mr Hamish McIntyre – Treasurer
- Mr Stephen Gibbons – New AWA Board Member
- Ms Gina Lincoln
- Mr Dean Pollard
- Mr Nathan Roberts – New AWA Board Member
- Mr Adam Withers
Current Market Conditions:
Reflecting on the current markets, the Wagyu market is now maturing, it is now a mainstream part of the industry. We typically see a premium in Wagyu markets of between 10% to 50%, which can be heavily influenced by the data and performance history of cattle, particularly F1 cattle. With this, I raise the AWA’s Wagyu Feeder Check tool as an important piece of data to help support the marketing and promotion of your feeder cattle.
As a feedlotter, we see the Wagyu Feeder Check as important piece of the puzzle when we are buying feeder cattle. It helps us plan our feeding programs and the Wagyu Feeder Check is becoming a serious component of our consideration when buying feeder cattle. Using the Wagyu Feeder Check data, we can plan to exit the bottoms of a line of cattle early and plan our feeding program appropriately for the high performance animals, with these animals spending less time in the feedlot to meet carcase specifications. This will be increasingly important as we seek to improve sustainability and resource use through long-fed programs.
Looking into 2025, there are market signals from our partners that prices for Wagyu beef globally should improve towards the end of the year. As always, the Wagyu game is a long one and staying the course delivers the highest returns through developed and reliable supply relationships as demand picks up.
AWA Board Focus:
We are very aware that it is the members who submit their data to AWA, and that our members do this trusting that AWA is using this information with integrity and for the good of the breed. It is satisfying to see the delivery of tools back to members to assist them to better manage and use genetic diversity to improve the sustainability of our genetic resources for future generations.
Twelve months ago, I indicated that the AWA was undertaking projects to help members maintain and optimise Genetic Diversity and manage inbreeding within the Wagyu population. This has been an important part of the AWA Board’s focus. We have now completed these projects, with Genetic Diversity and Genomic Inbreeding now published for AWA members. These innovations add value to the investments already made by Members in undertaking genotyping with the AWA.
The AWA will continue to add value to your investments with us. If you wish to maximise your value return from your DNA investments, please keep in mind that our genomic innovations are only able to be delivered from high density genomic tools. We encourage all Members to maximise the value they get from their spend on genomics by testing with the AWA using genomic DNA testing. This is data in the bank that will continue to deliver value for you in the future, rather than one off parentage which might give you a registration, but no additional value.
The AWA Board has communicated previously (2022) that it has undertaken projects to evaluate external genetic services and database providers. This work has been significantly progressed during the last 12 months and the AWA is now able to undertake complete genetic analysis for Wagyu to fully define the genetic parameters and trait relationships for Wagyu cattle. We have also completed the transition to Wagyu-specific selection indexes with the launch of our new F1 Terminal and Fullblood Terminal Indexes with AbacusBio.
The initiatives and progress of the AWA over the last several years is something I’m very proud of contributing to and intend to continue to build on during the next twelve months. The vision of past Boards is being built on today and we endeavour to always push forward with our research and development delivery for the Wagyu breed.
I look forward to being accessible to and working with all members during the coming 12 months as we launch our AWA 2025-2030 Strategic Plan. The purpose of our organisation has been refined to “For our Members, For the Industry”. I believe this purpose defines the DNA of the Australian Wagyu Association and your Board will continue to drive our organisation forward to deliver for you.
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